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Washington Loan and Trust Company

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James G. Hill, 1891. 9th and F streets NW
  • Washington Loan and Trust Company (Library of Congress)

Now a branch of the Riggs National Bank, the Washington and Loan Trust Company is a commanding nine-story Romanesque Revival building located diagonally from the Patent Office Building (see DE15.2). The building's presence marks an abrupt transition on this thoroughfare between the classicism of the cluster of buildings defined by the Patent Office and the General Post Office and the surrounding buildings of Downtown East. The gray rock-faced granite ashlar gives a rich texture to the facade, over an internal frame of steel floor beams and cast-iron columns. Seen on the exterior, the lower two stories form the base of the design, the next four are treated as an elongated arcade, and the next two form a separate unit with flat-arch windows. At the top is a single story of small round-arch windows, the whole crowned by a modest cornice.

After leaving his position with the Supervising Architect's Office, Hill enjoyed a flourishing practice in Washington, designing buildings such as the massive Government Printing Office in the Romanesque Revival style and apartment houses and residences throughout the city.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Pamela Scott and Antoinette J. Lee
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Data

What's Nearby

Le Droit Building
Downtown Historic District
Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American Art, National Portrait Gallery
United States Tariff Commission Building (United States General Post Office)
Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library

Citation

Pamela Scott and Antoinette J. Lee, "Washington Loan and Trust Company", [Washington, District of Columbia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/DC-01-DE15.5.

Print Source

Buildings of the District of Columbia, Pamela Scott and Antoinette J. Lee. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 194-194.

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